Our quest for 2009 green resolutions and greetings in going online today. We're very happy to have with us today Angela Wieck, co-founder of EcoBrain, an independent eBook distributor and the only online retailer of eBooks dedicated to the environment and environmentally friendly living.
We partner with EcoBrain, which offers its customers to plant trees with Eco-Libris.
Hello Angela. What is your green resolution for 2009?
1. Get tough with garbage - I am trying hard to think about what I put into the garbage and see if there is a way to reuse the item. It is so easy to throw stuff away. I’ve started keeping a pile that can be donated or given to someone in need. And using old stuff to make a craft pile that the kids can use. They find great fun making things with old bits of yarn, buttons, cardboard, and so on.
2. Use green products at home - Over the past year I have eliminated a lot of toxic chemicals that had been in use in my house. I didn’t realize that most laundry detergent is a petroleum product! So this journey continues.
3. Educate my children about green living - They remind us when we lapse because they have great memories and want to do the right thing. I left the water running between veggie washing and my son kindly reminded me to turn it off. Children make great coaches.
4. Continue to educate about the benefits of eBooks - We all know that books come from trees, but it goes much further when you add in trees being cut down, pollution to create the paper, fuel to deliver and so on. If we choose to read a few eBooks per year rather than buy paper books the difference we can make would be enormous.
What's your green wish for 2009? World peace of course! Read eBooks! And another wish for 2009 is that manufacturers will produce less packaging; and that we consumers will not want it. A few years ago I was in Germany and noticed that at the drugstore most bottles do not come in a cardboard box. When I asked about this I was told that manufacturers are charged extra if they provide a product with unnecessary packaging. They are way ahead of us on that!
Other greetings for the New Year? EcoBrain would like to wish everyone a happy and healthy 2009. Let’s continue to make this world a better place. .
Any other plans for 2009 you would like to share with our readers?
EcoBrain continues to offer great eBook titles at great prices to our customers. We love to hear feedback, so let us know what you think and if there is something you’d like to see. Happy New Year!!!
Thanks, Angela!
To learn more about the eBooks offered at EcoBrain, you are welcome to visit EcoBrain's website at http://www.ecobrain.com
We're happy to update you on a new eBook that is released today by Wyrdwood Publications: The Mouse in the Viking's Beard by R. Phillip Prince.
Not only that this is a great eBook, but one tree will also be planted with Eco-Libris for every copy sold. Last month we reported here on our new partnership with Wyrdwood Publications, a publisher that works solely online and specializes in the publishing of Pagan and Heathen eBooks.
As part of theircommitment to the environment, Wyrdwood Publications is planting a tree for every 'Green Leaves' eBook sold (and you can learn more about the Green Leaves Policy at http://www.wyrdwoodpublications.com/greenleaves.htm). Our collaboration started with the great eBook "The Witches' Course Book" by Raven Blackmoor and continues now with another great eBook - The Mouse in the Viking's Beard by R. Phillip Prince.
The Mouse in the Viking's Beard is A whimsical bed time tale of high adventure and camaraderie set in the lands and Myths of the Old Norse. A time when man, myth and legends lived side by side.... It's a wonderful bed time tale and it's available now on Wyrdwood Publications' website in a great price - only $4.99.
For more details on Wyrdwood Publications and the eBooks they publish please visit their website - www.wyrdwoodpublications.com
BookMooch is a very cool book-swapping community and a dear partner, so a new year is a good excuse (not that we need one) to remind you of our collaboration with them and how you can benefit from it!
BookMooch is based on a very simple and user-friendly points system, where every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch.
With more than 74,000 members from all over the world and 500,000 available book titles, there's always a good book you can mooch. Once you've read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish. And yes, it's totally free. You only pay for mailing your books.
BookMooch and Eco-Libris have partnered last year to offer Green Mooching, a special incentive to BookMoochers to balance out their books, and to Eco-Libris fans to start mooching some books.
For every 10 books you balance out you will receive a free BookMooch point you can then use to mooch a book online for free. If you don't have a BookMooch account yet go get one :)
The process is very simple – email us your BookMooch username after you make a purchase on Eco-Libris, or enter your BookMooch username in the comments box during the payment process. We will credit your BookMooch account accordingly. As we wrote here before, we believe that book swapping is a great concept: you can find books you are looking for at no cost, give books you want others to enjoy and of course benefit the environment. It's very similar to the concept of a library - maximizing the usage of every printed book minimizes the need to print new ones and saves many trees from being cut down.
Don't get me wrong - we don't want people to stop buying new books, but as long as books are printed mostly from virgin paper, we would like to see maximum usage for each printed copy. Therefore, we support the concept of book swapping and communities such as BookMooch.
No only that - from some data gathered it appears that the free swapping actually stimulate new book sales, as well as bring more people to read more books, so all in all it's this model is also beneficial for the book industry as well. You actually don't need this data to get to this conclusion with the growing free content that is provided by authors and publishers online to promote their books' sales.
For more information please check BookMooch website - www.bookmooch.com
Inspired by the new President, our search of green resolutions for the new year takes us today to Chicago.
Our guest today on "My Green Resolution for 2009" series is Amy Guth, author of Three Fallen Women (So New Media Publishing, 2006), founder and director of Pilcrow Lit Fest in Chicago and the new managing editor at So New Publishing. And yes, she also lives in Chicago.
Amy Guth has also a forthcoming second novel entitled "Light of Waters". Previously, she has written for The Believer, Monkeybicycle, Ninth Letter, Four Magazine, Bookslut, The Complete Meal and Outcry, among others.
As we mentioned above she is the newly-appointed managing editor at So New Publishing. She is also an assistant fiction editor at 42 Opus and hosts the monthly Fixx Reading Series in Chicago. You're welcome to read more about Amy on her website (http://guthagogo.com) and blog (http://www.bigmouthindeedstrikesagain.blogspot.com).
We collaborated with Amy on the Pilcrow Lit Fest last year and plan to do it again this year (the festival will take place on May 17-23, 2009 in Chicago. Check out the fest website for more information - http://pilcrowlitfest.com).
Hello Amy. What's your green resolution for 2009?
Every year, one of my resolutions is always the same, and that is to do everything a bit better, greater, larger than I did it the year before. That includes maintaining the existing level of green-living I practice in my home, diet, work, lifestyle and home office, but also to look for ways in the new year to improve in each area, which I mostly do by staying abreast of developments in sustainability, environmental issues and product development.
What's your green wish for 2009?
In 2008 I founded Pilcrow Lit Fest, a small press festival based in Chicago and took steps from the beginning to make the festival as eco-friendly as possible.
Near the end of the year, I also stepped into the role as managing editor at So New Publishing, the press with which my own first novel was released. In 2009 I want to not only give Pilcrow Lit Fest and So New my very best, but also foster as sustainable and low-impact environment as possible in both.
Today there was a big celebrations in Washington and we followed the Inauguration of President Obama with excitement, joy and hope for a better and greener future to come now.
We also have a small celebration of our own with a new collaboration we're happy to announce on. Eco-Libris is partnering with Zinerrific, an online magazine subscription retailer. Zinerrific will be offering their customers the option to balance out any subscriptions they buy through Zinerrific with an Eco-Libris tree-planting! To show their commitment to sustainability, Zinerrific will match every Eco-Libris tree planting purchase with a second tree!
Here's some information on our new partner - Zineriffic sells magazine subscriptions at the lowest prices allowed by publishers (in most cases) and they have an inventory of over 1400 magazine titles available for sale through their site.
Zinerrific pride themselves on their large selection of magazines, ease-of-ordering, fully honoring customer privacy, and readily-available customer service through email or their toll-free telephone number (1- 877-262-7641).
Sundance Film Festival is a great film festival. This year it's also very green. Maybe greener than ever.
As Michelle Meyers reports on CNET News, many of the films presented at this year's festival have a green theme.Meyers reports that five out of the 32 documentaries competing at this year's festival fall squarely in the category of environmental films and that that's just a small fraction of the number of such films submitted to compete at the festival.
With a record of great green films that had their premiere at the festival, such as Who Killed the Electric Car and of course An Inconvenient Truth, there's definitely a lot of expectation around these films.
And there also green parties at Sundance! Michael Cieply reported on the NYT that today in the evening evening, green.msn.com and Self magazine plan to join Greenhouse, a New York City nightclub using environmentally sustainable materials, in sponsoring what they called a big, “ecofriendly” party for “Crude” at the Sky Lodge in Park City.
Here is a little taste of some of the green films that you can see in the festival, which runs until January 25 in ark City, Utah (descriptions of the films are taken of their web pages on the festival's website):
Author Colin Beavan and his family are pictures of liberal complacency—sophisticated, takeout-addicted New Yorkers who refuse to let moral qualms interfere with good old-fashioned American consumerism. Then Colin turns things upside down. For his next book, he announces he's becoming No Impact Man, testing whether making zero environmental impact adversely affects happiness.The hitch is he needs his wife, Michelle—an espresso-guzzling, Prada-worshipping Business Week writer—and their toddler to join the experiment. A year without electricity, cars, toilet paper, and nonlocal food isn’t going to be a walk in the park. Or is it?
Inspired by William Bryant Logan’s acclaimed book Dirt, the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, directors Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow employ a colorful combination of animation, vignettes, and personal accounts from farmers, physicists, church leaders, children, wine critics, anthropologists, and activists to learn about dirt—where it comes from, how we regard (or disregard) it, how it sustains us, the way it has become endangered, and what we can do about it.
Benenson and Rosow find answers everywhere: in tiny villages that dare to rise up to battle giant corporations to trendy organic farms; from prison horticultural programs to scientists who discover connections with soil that can offset the damage from global warming. The fresh and generous spirit of Dirt! The Movie is simple and energizing. You may walk into the theatre on asphalt, carpet, and cement, but you will likely walk out with a rekindled connection to the living, dark, rich soil that lies beneath you and a mind set on cultivating a new future.
Director Robert Stone concocts an inspiring and hopeful work in Earth Days, a feature documentary that recounts the history of the modern environmental movement from its beginnings nearly four decades ago.
Environmental activism really began with the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, and precipitated an unexpected and galvanizing effect on the national psyche.Told through the eyes of nine very divergent witnesses, including a secretary of the interior, Stewart Udall, who actually cared about the environment; a biologist, Paul Ehrlich; a congressman, Pete McCloskey; and an astronaut, Rusty Schweickart, Earth Days is a visually stunning, globe-spanning chronicle of watershed events and consciousness-changing realizations that prompted a new awareness: the post–World War II American dream of a future world created by scientific progress, new technology, and economic expansion was rapidly changing into a nightmare. The End of the Line by Rupert Murray Based on the book by Charles Clover, The End of the Line explores the devastating effect that overfishing is having on fish stocks and the health of our oceans.With Clover as his guide, Sundance veteran Rupert Murray (Unknown White Male) crisscrosses the globe, examining what is causing the dilemma and what can be done to solve it.Industrial fishing began in the 1950s. High-tech fisheries now trawl the oceans with nets the size of football fields. Species cannot survive at the rate they are being removed from the sea.
Add in cofactors of decades of bad science, corporate greed, small-minded governments, and escalating consumer demand, and we’re left with a crisis of epic proportions. Ninety percent of the big fish in our oceans are now gone.Murray interweaves glorious footage from both underwater and above with shocking scientific testimony to paint a vivid and alarming profile of the state of the sea. The ultimate power of The End of the Line is that it moves beyond doomsday rhetoric to proffer real solutions. Chillingly topical, The End of the Line drives home the message: the clock is ticking, and the time to act is now.
Can 30,000 plaintiffs from five Indigenous Ecuadoran tribes find justice from Chevron, one of the world’s largest oil producers? Who is responsible for the unconscionable dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste in the Ecuadoran Amazon, poisoning the most biodiverse place on the planet?
Though the Ecuadorans and their perspective receive the lion's share of screen time, the film makes a concerted effort to show the case from all sides: from the scientists and lawyers employed by Chevron, to Ecuadoran judges, to celebrity activists and humanitarian organizers, to the role of the media, to the dramatic intervention of Rafael Correa himself, the first Ecuadoran president to sympathize with the Indigenous perspective. In a tale that spans the globe, Crude looks beyond compassion for the disenfranchised and the corruption of those in power to ask how justice itself is being defined in the twenty-first century. The film's website
We continue with our journey looking to learn more about our partners' green resolutions for 2009, and today we have a very special guest: Dr. Anne Hallum, Founder and Director of the Alliance for International Reforestation (AIR), which is one of Eco-Libris planting partners.
AIR is working mainly in Guatemala, where it plants trees and is involved in other activities such as providing environmental education for teachers and farmers, digging wells, building fuel-efficient brick ovens. AIR was founded by Dr. Anne Hallum in 1992 at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, where she serves as a Political Science Professor.
In its first year of operations Eco-Libris planted more than 25,000 trees with AIR. You are welcome to learn more about it from our annual assessment of these operations. Dr. Anne Hallum and residents reforesting a hillside near Xetonox, 2008. Photo courtsey of AIR. Hello Anne. What's your professional green resolution for 2009? To plant even more trees in Guatemala, and to write successful grants for expansion. I will also be teaching two Environmental politics classes this semester, so another professional resolution is to engage and motivate students to “green the campus”(to buy Eco-Libris stickers, for instance).
If you have a personal green resolution for 2009, what is it? My personal green resolution is to make our backyard more of a refuge for birds:more birdbaths, bird houses, planting more trees, and leaving any dead ones standing for woodpeckers. Almost 80 percent of North American bird species are in decline from habitat loss. I also resolve to continue to reduce my own use of water and carbon fuels….
What’s your green wish for 2009? My green wish is for world leaders to quickly negotiate a new Protocol for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and to give it some teeth.(Meanwhile, I wish for environmental activism on the ground to continue to spread.)
If you have any other greetings, please feel free to add them. The AIR staff in Guatemala send heartfelt thanks to every person who bought Eco-Libris stickers, and to every bookstore and publisher who sold them.We have several tree nurseries in Guatemala, dedicated to growing trees in your name. Any other plans for 2009? AIR-Guatemala was just awarded a small grant from the United Nations (UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues), to build more fuel-efficient stoves!This is a prestigious recognition that AIR works directly with indigenous people. Every stove conserves a ton of firewood a year; and each family with a stove volunteers in planting many trees.We also plan to plant trees to protect the MayuelasRiver watershed, in a brand new region of Guatemala.
The Alliance for International Reforestation (AIR) is a non-profit organization working to make a difference for the people of Guatemala and Nicaragua. AIR was founded by Political Science Professor Anne M. Hallum in 1992 at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. AIR's objective is to assist local communities in Central America to conserve their environment through reforestation, sustainable farming, and education. So far, AIR planted more than 3 million trees in Guatemala and Nicaragua. In 2004, AIR was named The Best Environmental NGO in Guatemala for 2004, by the national government's forestry institute in Guatemala.
AIR works to initiate continuous reforestation programs at the community level. All of AIR's projects are based on the philosophy that direct community involvement in all phases of the projects, from their design to their implementation, is essential for the success and sustainability of project activities.
The daily destruction of forests that occurs in Guatemala is a serious problem - each year more than 1620 square kilometers are deforested. This has already had a severe negative impact on the environment: water sources are quickly disappearing, 65% of Guatemalan soil is considered highly susceptible to erosion and air quality is deteriorating rapidly. In addition, deforestation leads to the depletion of essential nutrients in the soils, especially those used for agricultural activities. As these soils become drained of nutrients and no longer support agriculture, populations migrate to virgin areas and conduct slash-and-burn activities, continuing the cycle of deforestation.
The replanting of trees on community lands, in addition to otherwise conserving the environment, replenishes soil nutrients, and therefore decelerates the destruction of the virgin forests that remain in Guatemala.
Women who work at AIR's nursery in San Andres ,Itzapa, Guatemala, which is supported by Eco-Libris. AIR has worked here for six years, producing and planting tens of thousands of trees. Photo courtsey of AIR. So far on "My Green Resolution for 2009":
Founded in 2007, Eco-Libris is a green company working to green up the book industry in the digital age by promoting the adoption of green practices in the book industry, balancing out books by planting trees, and helping to make e-reading greener.
To achieve these goals Eco-Libris is working with book readers, publishers, authors, bookstores and others in the book industry worldwide. So far Eco-Libris balanced out over 179,500 books, which results in more than 200,000 new trees planted with its planting partners in developing countries.
Our quest for 2009 green resolutions and greetings in going online today. We're very happy to have with us today Angela Wieck, co-founder of EcoBrain, an independent eBook distributor and the only online retailer of eBooks dedicated to the environment and environmentally friendly living. 
Hello Angela. What is your green resolution for 2009?
